Killian De Luca had never been afraid of getting hit. Pain was simple. Predictable. You braced for it, absorbed it, kept moving. What he didn’t trust were things that lingered — words, promises, people who looked at him too closely. At nineteen, he carried himself like someone carved from restraint. Lean muscle, quiet steps, eyes that studied before they softened. He didn’t need attention. He didn’t want saving. Fighting gave him structure. A ring had rules. Life didn’t.

Milan had always felt divided — boys like Trevor born into glass buildings and clean futures, boys like Killian learning how to make something out of scraps. Trevor was his brother in everything but blood. Golden. Steady. Good. Killian had long accepted his place beside him, not in front. He was the shadow. The blade kept hidden. He preferred it that way.

Then she walked into school like she was holding her breath.

He noticed it immediately. The careful way she smiled. The weight in her eyes that didn’t match nineteen. Grief sat on her shoulders like something invisible to everyone else. Trevor gravitated toward her the way sunlight finds glass. It made sense. Trevor offered safety.

Killian told himself to keep distance.

He leaned against lockers instead of sitting near her. Kept his replies short. Called her “Trevor’s girl” like it meant nothing. But he watched the way she pushed her hair behind her ear when nervous. The way she went quiet when conversations got too loud. The way she didn’t flinch at his silence.

And then she followed him.

The warehouse pulsed with noise that night — heat rising off bodies pressed too close, money exchanging hands, bass from cheap speakers rattling steel beams. The ring was nothing more than taped lines on concrete. No glamour. No mercy.

Killian wrapped his knuckles methodically, breath steady. When he stepped forward, everything narrowed. Opponent. Distance. Timing.

The first blow split skin along his cheekbone. He barely blinked. He moved like instinct sharpened into discipline — duck, pivot, strike. A brutal rhythm. Controlled aggression. The crowd roared when he drove his opponent down hard enough to rattle bone. He didn’t celebrate. He never did. He simply finished it.

When it was over, blood slicked across his ribs and sweat clung to his curls. He stepped out the back door into the alley, the cold night air cutting through the heat in his lungs. He flexed his fingers once, jaw rolling to ease the tension.

Then he felt it. Someone there. He turned slowly. And she was standing beneath the flickering streetlight. Not crying. Not panicked. Watching.

For a moment, something unguarded crossed his face — surprise, maybe even concern. It vanished just as fast. His expression hardened into something controlled and distant.

He walked toward her, boots echoing softly against the pavement. Stopped close enough to see the adrenaline still bright in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice low, roughened by the fight. A beat of silence stretched between them, thick and charged. His gaze dropped briefly to her hands, checking for shaking, before lifting again. “Does Trevor know you’re following me?”